 |
| AWSN |
| |
Arab World Studies Notebood
'The First Christians'
By Audrey Shabbas
|
| |
Christianity is the religion of over one billion people throughout the world, and there are three major divisions within it: the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant denominations, and the Eastern Rite churches. Most Westerners are generally familiar with the first two, but are much less familiar with the Eastern Rite churches which are predominant in the Arab World. Many Westerners are even surprised to learn that there are nearly fourteen million Arabs who are Christians, and that many are descendants of the very first believers. (And many are surprised to learn that most Arab Americans are Christian Arabs.)
The term "Arab" does not refer to a race and even less to a religion, but rather to a language and a culture. An "Arab" is a person of
Christianity Began in Asia
The history of Christianity began in Asia. Its first centers were Asian, as were the first known church building, the first translation of the New Testament, perhaps the first Christian king, the first Christian state, even the first Christian poets.
Although the story of Christianity in the West has often been told, the history of Christianity in the East — in Syria, Persian, Indian, Tang Dynasty China, and the Mongolian Empire of Genghis Khan and his grandson, Kublai Khan — has not. Here is a Christianity that looked neither to Rome nor Constantinople as its center and which remained for centuries proudly Asian.
Samual Hugh Moffett. A History of Christianity in Asia. Vol. 1 Beginnings to 1500. San Francisco: Harpers, 1992.
|
Arab culture who partakes in the history of the Arab world. The same notion was in fact proposed by the Prophet Muhammad who, according to a hadith, stated: "To be Arab is not a question of race or geneology but of language. Whoever speaks Arabic is Arab." Therefore when one speaks of Arab Christians, one means Christians of Arab culture and language.
Christianity is based on the very first believers' fundamental belief that Jesus is the son of God and the promised Messiah. Jesus taught that God is love and knows no national or racial bounds. Christians believe that by submitting to God's will and accepting God's teachings, one can gain eternal life in the Kingdom of God. The basic tenets of Christianity include active good will; the brotherhood of man and the love of others as oneself; absolute truth and honesty; joy in the love of God; and sincerity of word and deed.
All over the world, Christians observe the weekly Sabbath on Sunday. The major religious holidays include Christmas, celebrating the birth of Christ, and Easter, honoring the day Jesus rose from the dead.
|
"Arab Christians pray to Allah. "Allah" is the Arabic word for the one God. If your language is Arabic, this is the word you use in worshipping the one God. Jesus, who spoke Aramaic, used the word "Allaha," and the word in Hebrew is "Ailohim" -- all three words derive from the same root."
|
The Holy Book is the Bible, composed of the Old and New Testaments. The latter tells of the life of Jesus and his teachings, while the books of the Old Testament, Christians believe, chronicle the history of humankind's relationship with God and revelations of the coming of the Messiah.
The first major split in Christianity occurred in the fifth century A.D. over a disagreement concerning the nature of Christ. At the Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.), Western Church leaders affirmed the dual nature of Christ, maintaining that Christ was both divine (spirit) and human (body), a position still held by the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches. However, a significant number of believers throughout the predominantly Christian Middle East of the fifth century, rejected this decision, maintaining their adherence to a Monophysite definition of Christ: that Christ was of a single nature -- divine.
Non-Chalcedonians
The Non--Chalcedonians (Monophysites — those not accepting the Council of Chalcedon) are today divided into four main churches: the Assyrian Church of the East, the Coptic Orthodox, the Syrian Orthodox, and the Armenian Orthodox.
The Assyrian Church of the East, the oldest of these, is today the smallest
Hannan Ashrawi
Asked how being an Anglican Christian affected her Palestinian identity, Hannan Ashrawi, spokesperson for the Palestinian delegation to the Israel/Palestinian peace talks, had this to say:
"I keep reminding people that Christianity started in Palestine. It's a Middle Eastern religion, and we are extensions of the earliest community in Palestine. We have been there for centuries. Part of our own self-definition as Palestinians is that we are the original Christians and that we also have centuries of Muslim history. This society, which is so complex, has developed in ways in which mutual tolerance grew very organic!
I do not even know who is Christian and who is Muslim among my friends. We were solidly together as part of Palestinian authenticity, Palestinian nationality.
So the Palestinian Christians are not a minority. We are Palestinians and we happened to be Christians, and this is part of our heritage and our authenticity. The Muslims are guardians of holy places, of Christian places, as Christians can be guardians of Muslim holy places.
Commonweal, October 8, 1993
|
in number of adherents. The Assyrians, as members prefer to be called, have also been referred to as "Nestorians," after Nestorius of Antioch, who was declared a heretic for his Monophysite teachings. In the early Middle Ages, the Nestorian Church was the most widespread in the world.
The Assyrians are unique, as they use neither painting nor sculpture in worship, usually having only a plain cross above the altar. Prayer and worship are conducted in Aramaic (the language of Jesus). Communion is celebrated with bread baked with holy leaven. By tradition, the Disciple John took a piece of bread at the Last Supper for future Eucharist loaves. Since then, a piece of dough from each baking has been saved as a "starter" for the next baking. The Assyrian Church of the East claims continuance since the Apostolic age, with the tradition that their first bishop was the Apostle James, and that the conversion of Edessa (their capital city) took place within the lifetime of Jesus.
The other main Monophysite churches are the Coptic Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox.
The largest of the Monophysite churches is the Coptic Orthodox, located primarily in Egypt, and in Ethiopia. The Copts believe that their church originated from the Apostle Mark, who went to Alexandria to spread the word of Jesus. The head of the Coptic Church has the title of Pope and is revered as the successor of St. Mark. Today the Coptic Cathedral is located in Cairo, and in it are the remains of St. Mark which were presented to the Copts as a gift of good will by the Roman Catholics. The Coptic Church is the largest Christian community in the Middle East, with about six--million believers.
The Coptic language used in Coptic liturgy is, although written in the Greek alphabet, actually a survival of the ancient Egyptian and is a key to understanding that pharoanic language.
The second largest of the Monophysite churches in the Middle East is the Syrian Orthodox, whose members are also referred to as Jacobites after the sixth century bishop, Jacob Baradaeus.
Saint Augustine, the Libyan
The Basilica of St. Augustine is in Annaba, Algeria, on the coast, very near Tunisia. The son of a Libyan Berber and a Libyan Jew who converted to Christianity, St. Augustine wrote his City of God in Annaba.
|
They are also called the West Syrian Church in order to distinguish them from the East Syrians, i.e., the Assyrians (Nestorians). Through the work of Jacob Baradacus, the Syrian Orthodox Church became the national church of Syria, and by the thirteenth century, they made up almost half the rural population of the country. Numbering about 160,000, the Syrian Orthodox consider the Patriarch of Antioch in Damascus to be their spiritual leader. To this day, worship is conducted in Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic) and the sign of the cross is made with one finger, signifying their Monophysite belief.
Adhering strictly to their Monophysite beliefs, these early Christian churches also rejected (in varying degrees) the notions of the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Ghost) and the veneration of Mary which was to develop in the Western or Roman Catholic Church. These they rejected out of their strict adherence to monotheism, which they held to be central to Christianity. Such positions put them at odds with the Church in Rome and compounded their alienation from Westerners, who saw them as "others." Within a century after Islam, these "others" had in large numbers embraced Islam, whose appeal came in large part from a shared vision of strict monotheism born of a culture of shared values and world view. To the Muslims, these Eastern Christians were not heretics of an alien culture and language, but rather "People of the Book" to whom new revelations had been made through the Prophet Muhammad.
The Chalcedonians: The Great Schism of 1054
The next major schism of Christianity that was to have a lasting effect upon Christianity in the Middle East was among those who had accepted the Council of Chalcedon. In 1054, after 451 years of calling themselves "The Holy, Orthodox, Catholic, Apostolic Church," the Eastern and Western church hierarchy
Will the Holy Land become a theme park of Christian history with most of the Christians gone?
"We, as Christians, have become an insignificant part of the population," says Canon Riah Abu El Assal, archdeacon of the Jerusalem diocese of the Evangelical Episcopal Church. In the middle of the century, Christians represented 25 percent of the Holy Land's population, he explains in the small, stone Christ Church, a short walk from the Nazareth site where tradition says the angel Gabriel told Mary she would give birth to the Messiah. Now the Christian population is only around 2 percent.
In less than 30 years [since the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem began in 1967], Riah says, the number of Christians in the faith's geographical heart, Jerusalem, has dropped from 28,000 to 7,000.. . The drain of Christians from the Holy Land, little noted by the church in the rest of the world, is part of a general exodus of Palestinian Arabs from a homeland they have found hostile and unpromising. Beginning in 1948, when the new State of Israel occupied vast areas of Palestinian land and began imposing harsh conditions on its Arab inhabitants, steady emigration has scattered the Holy Land's Christian families throughout the earth.
Their departure has not been undertaken lightly. Palestinians commonly trace family ties to the land back hundreds of years. Christians often claim roots in the country dating from the time of the apostles.
"We frequently get asked, ‘When did you convert?'" Jonathan Kuttab, 42, a Christian attorney and human-rights activists in Jerusalem. "We're Christians from the day of Pentecost. We have lived in this society, we have held witness, the testimony, all these years."
Bruce Brander, "Will Palestinian Christians Survive?" Christianity Today, 1994.
|
reached an impasse over whose authority was supreme — the authority of Rome or the authority of Constantinople (now Istanbul). The differences touched on questions of church and dogma as well as on those of state and politics, for there was no separation of church and state during the Early Middle Ages. The Church was split into two — the Roman Catholic Church, centered in Rome, and the Eastern or Greek Orthodox Church, centered in Constantinople.
Greek Orthodoxy in the Middle East
Most of the Chalcedonian Christians in the Middle East remained loyal to the Patriarch of Constantinople after the great schism of 1054. They regarded him as their key ecclesiastic, and used Greek as the language of prayer and worship, unlike the Roman Catholics who used Latin. Today the other Greek Orthodox Patriarchs are located in Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. In doctrine and liturgy, all are the same, although each See functions as an independent body.
The Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church in Istanbul is Greek, and ministers to approximately two--million Greek Orthodox who are ethnically Greeks. In Alexandria, a Greek Patriarch ministers to a predominantly Greek community, while the See of Antioch is headed by an Arab Patriarch who resides in Damascus and heads a Christian community of a million Arabs in Syria and Lebanon. The Patriarch of Jerusalem heads a community of more than one hundred thousand Palestinians who live in Jordan, Israel, and the occupied West Bank. The liturgy is celebrated in Arabic in these Arabic--speaking churches.
The Uniates
The picture of Middle Eastern Christendom is further complicated as each church has split at one time in its history. The churches mentioned above as Monophysite or Non--Chalcedonian do not recognize the Pope in Rome as the supreme leader. However, breakaway groups within each have accepted papal supremacy and have "reunited" with the Roman Catholic Church. Collectively, they are known as Uniates or Eastern Rite Catholics. They have been allowed to retain their ancient languages of worship and continue their traditions and rites. They include Greek Catholics (Melchites), Syrian Catholics, who separated from the Syrian Orthodox (Jacobites), Catholic Copts, and Chaldean Catholics (a splinter group of The Assyrian Church of the East).
The Maronites
Unlike the Uniates, the Maronites claim never to have been outside the Roman Commonwealth (though some scholars believe they were originally Monophysites). The Maronite Church became the first Eastern church to accept papal supremacy in about 1180. St. Maron (ca. 350--433 A.D.), who espoused the monastic life, is considered by the Maronites as the apostle of Lebanese Christianity. The Maronites form one
The Iraqi Christian Community is Also Dwindling
It is estimated that 200,000 Iraqi Christians have emigrated from Iraq since the beginning of the Gulf Crisis in August 1990. In 1980, Christians were estimated to number 1,000,000 out of a total Iraqi population of 17 million, about 6 percent. Today, Christians number, at most, 600,000 out of 21 million, about 2.8 percent. Many of the Iraqi Christians who have left since the Gulf Crisis are living as refugees in Lebanon.
|
of the largest Arab Christian churches in the Middle East, being especially strong in Lebanon with 1,200,000 believers, while those who have emigrated from the Middle East number as many as 6,500,000. The Maronites have preserved their ancient Syriac liturgy, although most of their worship is conducted in Arabic. Their Patriarch resides near Beirut.
Missionary Activities
In addition, as a result of Western missionary activities during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, newly formed Christian groupings were founded in different parts of the Middle East — predominantly from communities that were already members of one of the early Christian churches.
Protestants officialy number fewer than three hundred thousand in the Arab world. Under their own Arab leadership, there are Presbyterians in Lebanon and Syria (where the American Mission sponsored its first congregation in 1848) and Episcopalians (Anglicans) in Jordan and Palestine. Episcopalians and Presbyterians are also active in Egypt, where the Coptic Evangelical Church (Presbyterian) is the largest Protestant group in the country.
|
| |
|
